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Nice little session last night, fishing by 8PM and off the water just on 1.00AM. Tried a spot I found mid week and this time scored a few fish from it. Had plenty of light with the moon just past full. Here's a couple of pics of one of the fish.

The rap thingie got all the fish, running it on the shallow side, eatmetoo just could'nt stay connected and got a smack in the bib for its troubles by one it conldn't handle, it'll learn.

My hired hand on the camera still has to remember that its place is behind, not in front, also must remember to take the glasses off

Last pic does a good job of showing the scale loss fish are subject to on the jump and thrash

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did you catch her holding against that steep bank behind you in the first piccy?

No Dave it was about 20 metres off shore but when I got the fish to the boat I decided I wanted a pic of the fish in hand so I left it in the net and idled into shore at that spot. The idea was to have the cutting as a backdrop for the pic, to fill the background with something a bit more than black. Believe it or not the boat headlight is on and illuminating the cutting and the flash is a kickarse one (gn 42 I think). Why didn't it come up better being only about three metres behind me and fully lit? Bloody barra reflecting back enough light for the camera and flash to say "Yep, that's enough!" Its a big problem when photographing reflective fish like barra, you have to get the angle just right for the photo to come up good. In that picture it's good enough for the foreground but not good enough to include the background. A way to deal with it is to have the camera over expose on the fish, but the it just turns into a very bright silver blob.

On the subject of reflectivness, note in the third shot you have a better balance between foregound and background. That's being achieved by shooting from the top of the fish picking up the less reflective scales and allowing the weed bed to come into the shot, if the fish was completly on its side you'd miss out on the weed bed. Another method is to tilt the fish a bit to expose the flanks as in the second shot. You still have the darker scales dominating and the more reflective belly scales are at an angle to the camera, this bounces the much of the light away, hence the longer flash time and the background being lit up. The angle shot also pics gives off those magnificent blues greens, bronzes and purples, a trait explained to me once but forgotten by me. You can enhance it a bit with some post processing but with the right angle allowing the right amount of light you can see it in real life when you take the shot.

PS Dog says what's senile

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Did that lure have both sets of hooks embedded or was it jammed sideways in that Barra's gob?

Fitz, an embedded hook on either side, the one you can see was the reason for the glasses and the sidecutters eventually

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When are you coming over this way next ?

Not sure Trev, keen but hard to justify with all the other commitments, think someone torpedeod our bank account, sinking fast

Wish you were only a two day drive away dog and me would abandon the family for a sneaky week, she needs new fish to bark at.

I think it only fair that Dog included herself in the pics. If she's doing all that work with exposures and angles and flash rates and things, she needs all the recognition she can get, and spending 5 hours in a boat with a smelly old fisherman can't be that nice for her either.